Thought I would start a thread to see if anyone received any CD's for Christmas and what their impressions of them were.
For my part, I received three. The best of the bunch is the new Kurt Elling disc which offers a very wide range of material ranging from The Monkee's "Pleasnt Valley Sunday" through to Ellington's "Tootie for Cootie" as well as a couple of standards. The rest is pop material from the 60's and 70's re-cast as contemporary jazz. As ever, the arrangements by Lawrence Hopgood are the icing on the cake.
The most bizaree record is Dave Douglas' "Be Still" which is a moving tridbute to his late mother and features a number of hymns and folk material like "Barbera Allen." This disc features a new quintet with the tenor taken by Jon Irabagon who will be familiar to Calum of no one else. Bizarrely, the group is rounded off by folk singer Aoife O' Donovan who sounds like a purer version of Gillian Welch and the contrast with the jazz group is very marked indeed. At first, I felt this record was a little disappointing due to it's melancholy tone but repeated listening reveals this to be a very good record indeed. It is almost a folk / hymn equivalent of Miles' "Sketches of Spain."
My third disc was the new Donny McCaslin. (Where is Charles, btw?) This record is a bit of a shock being a tough and uncompromising slab of jazz rock. It sounds like the kind of jazz rock that was being played in the 1980's with the band tight and inflexible and having very little to do with the kind of jazz you usually associate with him. I'm staggered that McCaslin produced a record like this as it is so removed from his other work - it was quite a hard listen on first play. MCCaslin's last CD similarly did not appeal on first listen but subsequently revealed itself to be a very solid disc. This will probably need a few more plays but I can't stress how markedly different this is.
For my part, I received three. The best of the bunch is the new Kurt Elling disc which offers a very wide range of material ranging from The Monkee's "Pleasnt Valley Sunday" through to Ellington's "Tootie for Cootie" as well as a couple of standards. The rest is pop material from the 60's and 70's re-cast as contemporary jazz. As ever, the arrangements by Lawrence Hopgood are the icing on the cake.
The most bizaree record is Dave Douglas' "Be Still" which is a moving tridbute to his late mother and features a number of hymns and folk material like "Barbera Allen." This disc features a new quintet with the tenor taken by Jon Irabagon who will be familiar to Calum of no one else. Bizarrely, the group is rounded off by folk singer Aoife O' Donovan who sounds like a purer version of Gillian Welch and the contrast with the jazz group is very marked indeed. At first, I felt this record was a little disappointing due to it's melancholy tone but repeated listening reveals this to be a very good record indeed. It is almost a folk / hymn equivalent of Miles' "Sketches of Spain."
My third disc was the new Donny McCaslin. (Where is Charles, btw?) This record is a bit of a shock being a tough and uncompromising slab of jazz rock. It sounds like the kind of jazz rock that was being played in the 1980's with the band tight and inflexible and having very little to do with the kind of jazz you usually associate with him. I'm staggered that McCaslin produced a record like this as it is so removed from his other work - it was quite a hard listen on first play. MCCaslin's last CD similarly did not appeal on first listen but subsequently revealed itself to be a very solid disc. This will probably need a few more plays but I can't stress how markedly different this is.
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